Stop talking. Start doing. Cut costs.

July 14, 2008

MANAGE STRESS TO IMPROVE WORK PERFORMANCE AND HEALTH

We can’t avoid stress.

It’s part of a normal day .At work there are customer demands and deadlines, traffic that keeps getting worse both morning and evening, and from the moment the alarm rings to bedtime, people struggle to cope with busy family schedules.It’s hard to find time to decompress, to relax.And the constant pressure is causing health issues – headaches, sleep problems, immune system weakness, muscle tension that causes backache.The list is long – lots of small aches and pains and sometimes some big problems like heart disease or high blood pressure.

Do you have stress in your life?The bottom line is that everyone does.I remember when a researcher asked me if I felt stress on a regular basis, I said“no, not really”.He laughed and made me realize that I was kidding myself.Stress is part of every day for all of us.And the consistent stress we all experience causes interesting chemical changes in our bodies. Many of them aren’t so good for us.

STRESS MANAGEMENT CAN BE LEARNED.

I was amazed, but I learned that it is possible to control and manage your body’s response to the environmental stress.Yes, stress can be managed.It’s not hard to learn.The folks at HeartMath have done a lot of research on this topic.And Proactive Partners have teamed up with the HeartMath folks to bring stress management skills to the workplace.Why the workplace?First, ongoing stress will generally make an employee less productive, less effective.Managing the response to stress can actually make a person more focused, can help the person make smarter/better decisions despite the stress, can improve problem solving skills, can enhance performance. And then there’s the health costs that companies are dealing with as a result of people not effectively coping with stress.So a company has two reasons to teach people to manage stress.Check out www.beproactive.com and www.HeartMath.com

MANAGE STRESS FOR SUCCESS.

Controlling one’s reaction to stress has long been recognized as a key skill.Thomas Jefferson said,"Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances

However, with the world crying foul over the unprecedented effects that the gloom of stress has created; there is always a silver lining over this grey cloud- that of taking to health and to befriend it, slitting ties with unhealthy habits and schedules. It is never too late to get back one’s health.

You have 2 choices here. Either speak with management and bring up those points you have questioned here. Or, look for another job. This does not sound like a good place to work and yes, stress can affect not only your job performance but your health as well.